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Cordelia slumped for half a second before a shockwave of raw power pulsed through the ravine. Even the mimic took a step back. My foxglove straightened, only…she wasn’t my foxglove anymore. Her eyes were an inky violet, swimming with the infinite cosmos. With a twitch of slender shoulders, magnificent wings born of shadow and smoke unfurled behind her. Dark mist enveloped her body, swirling around her in a gown fit for gods.

The mimic moved to flee, but Cordelia raised a delicate hand, and it froze in place. She glanced over her shoulder to confirm its containment before turning her gaze back to the foul creature holding me.

“You have something of mine.” Her voice was as dark as her eyes, sultry and smooth and brimming with divinity. The void behind me loosened its grip, its bladed appendage retracting from my chest as it slunk back. I dropped to my knees with a pained gasp, reverent as much as weak. What was this power that had been hiding inside our Heart? The very air around us crackled with its intensity.

She thrust a hand out to her side, and the shadows coiled around it in dark tendrils to create a vicious scourge. With the graceful ease of a dancer, she swung it once around her, each tail flashing with a crystal shard at the end. When it connected with the incorporeal void, it shrieked an unholy sound, and I knew without looking that it had been obliterated. Dark Cordelia was unhurried as she turned her attention to the frozen mimic.

“Would you like to beg?” she taunted. “I’m sure it sounds so pretty when you do.” The mimic’s eyes were wild, but it was still under her thrall and couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Cordelia made a disappointed sound. “Too bad.” She didn’t bother with her weapon this time. With one divine touch of a finger, the demon turned to ash, crumbling to nothing.

This beautiful and frightening goddess stepped further into the ravine, and I saw that the battle had come to a standstill. My brothers and the dark parasites that were swarming them watched her slow approach. Someone crashed to their knees beside me, making me jump and then curse for it.

“Easy.” Rami wrapped a big hand around my shoulder. His touch flared hot, instinctively assessing the damage, but I slid his hand away before his magic could go to work.

“Save it,” I told him. Even though the void’s poison was embedded deep, doing more damage the longer it remained, I needed to know that Cordelia would be okay when this was over. “She may need it again.”

“What is happening here?”

As if to answer, Dark Cordelia lifted her empty hand, palm up. When she clenched it into a fist, every single void vanished, dissolved into oblivion. The remaining mimics scrambled for the embankment in a desperate bid to escape her wrath. My brothers leapt back into action, now joined by Lucian’s black-feathered form. Cordelia continued to swing her deadly lash in a full assault. The ethereal weapon stretched where she willed it, catching mimics in its unforgiving grasp and yanking them into my brothers’ waiting claws.

“Hän on Jumalatar,” Rami breathed beside me, the native words slipping out in a bewildered hush.

One by one, the remaining demons were torn apart. Cordelia reduced the corpses to ash. Soon the only evidence of our presence in the ravine was that of a tragic car accident. When the threat was gone, and the air was silent, the shadows adorning Cordelia in dark divinity retreated. The power was pulled back into her body, wings and weapons receding.

As the last traces of it faded, all that was left was a pale, trembling girl, and she crumbled into a heap on the forest floor.

38

CORDELIA

When I woke, it was dark and quiet. Not the gentle dark of night, but an emptiness. A space that was nothing but everything. My first thought was that I died in the woods, and it almost filled me with relief. If I was dead, then I couldn’t cause pain anymore.

I was a Jinx. A harbinger of misfortune. That’s all I’d ever been. Those things attacked us to get to me. Hurt the guys because they tried to protect me. My curse came for them in the end, and now they were better off without me. If they even survived.

“You are not cursed.” The layered voice surrounded me in the dark void. It swirled around me like a current, coming from within and without. It was the voice of my magic, but more.

“What are you?”

“I am many things. A Daughter of Night. The Reckoner.” The power behind her words crackled through me like electricity. “And for now, I am you.”

“Me? I don’t understand.”

“You are a twist of Fate. Even the sisters have grown tired of the corruption. This is why you were hidden from the world you now must enter. Only a vessel like you has the ability to restore the balance. You will be my retribution.”

“Retribution against who?”

“Those who sought to destroy me. Those who will seek to destroy us still.”

I shivered. The guys had suspected a threat like this. But how did they fit into everything?

“They are the key.” The voice of my magic answered my unspoken question. “Claiming them has unlocked the cage, and my power is⁠—”

“Your power is a curse.” The interruption snapped out of me. “Your power is the reason I’ve been alone my whole life. I don’t want it.”

The darkness fell silent for so long I wondered if I was alone again. Or about to be struck down.

Finally, “My power maintained balance in the world for millennia. It ensured that hubris was punished and crimes were avenged. Look at what has happened without it. Greed and violence swell, unchecked. Those with little are crushed under the boot heels of those who forever crave more.”

My mind raced. “Wait. Are you saying that my magic—your power—is some kind of…vigilante justice?”